In 2001-2002, its first year of existence, the International Community School (ICS), which serves 300 kindergarten through fifth graders in the predominantly Latino Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, California, felt assessment pressure from several different directions. ICS had to demonstrate that students were learning to write well, and it needed to measure students’ Spanish and English literacy skills in its bilingual
As an English as a Second Language teacher at Chicago’s Sullivan High School, Naomi Nakayama works with many refugee students who have come to the United States after years of disjointed or unavailable education. Refugee students take on the challenge of learning English while acquiring academic skills that many of their peers had the opportunity to master years before; often,
We recognize the fact that no two of our students are exactly the same, and that each changes over time. All this bubbling variety is inconvenient. It would be handy if each thirteen year old was a standardized being, pumping no more or fewer hormones than any other thirteen year old and speaking no language other than formal English. Life
Bilingual A person fluent in two languages. Bilingual Education Pedagogy conducted in two languages for the purpose of maintaining native language skills and building on those skills for English language learning. Dual-Language or Bilingual Immersion Academic programs in which there is an equal balance of English-proficient students and English language learners who collaborate to learn in both languages. Also described
“My immigrant grandparents were thrown into school with kids who spoke English and they survived. Why can’t kids do that today?” Some broadly held beliefs about language learning persist and strongly influence policy and pedagogy, despite what many language researchers agree are the best ways for students to learn English and other academic subjects. Myths and Realities, organized entirely around
National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition & Language Instruction Educational Programs (NCELA) Funded by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for LEP Students, the NCELA is a guide to the wide range of federal services for language minority students and a huge, well-organized resource for language learning research, data, policies, and
Each year, the United States Department of Education’s Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students issues data from its Survey of the States. These data, published by The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, demonstrate the acceleration of the number of Limited English Proficient (LEP) students not only in those states that
The Long Haul, one of our all-time favorite books, is an auto-biography of Myles Horton, who, through his High-lander Folk School in New Market, Tennessee, helped train Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Pete Seeger. It is one of the few books we give to staff members and friends. This book puts education goals into a broader
Exploring the connections between language, race, identity, and school success, The Skin That We Speak’s thirteen essays delve into how speakers of “nonstandard” English —mostly varieties of African-American dialects, or Ebonics —view themselves, how schools have often perpetuated the educational inequities of African American and other children, and how educators can create the best frameworks to honor students’ language and
Through a synthesis of recent research and individual, personal stories, Lucy Tse concisely, efficiently, and lucidly debunks persistent, widespread misconceptions about immigrants’ language use patterns in the United States. Contrary to the perceptions that have fueled recent anti-bilingual education initiatives in California and elsewhere, Tse demonstrates that on the whole, adult immigrants and their children learn English rapidly. But as
Deborah A. Bruns, faculty member at Southern Illinois University, and Robert M. Corso, researcher/educator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, analyzed research and current best practices in the realm of working with students and families from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Though their work focuses on early childhood education, their strategies also benefit school people who seek to build